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ANTIOCH — Tina Loyola Cabral is the friendly face dozens of people see when they come to American Legion Hall in Antioch for a warm meal, courtesy of Loaves and Fishes of Contra Costa County.
She bustles around the room, making sure the groceries from local food banks have arrived, volunteers and staff have the supplies they need and everyone gets their meals as well as what she calls “blessings bags,” which contain toiletries and other necessities that people struggling with poverty or homelessness could use.
She’s a ball of energy whose fulfillment comes in seeing how grateful or relieved the Loaves and Fishes clients are to be there.
“People depend on us every single day for food,” Loyola Cabral said. “It’s a place for them to come and get warm when it’s cold out or cool off when it’s hot. A place to meet up with friends and socialize. Many of them are seniors who are lonely. It means a lot.”
She knows first-hand how it feels to get that kind of help. For years, Loyola Cabral was one of the nonprofit’s clients herself.
Struggling with poverty and a meth addiction that spanned roughly 30 years, she would often drop her kids off for the weekday meals in summer or school breaks so they could eat while she got high on meth or went off buying and selling it.
The only job she knew was selling drugs, so the mother of six found herself bouncing from home to home, sleeping in her car or staying for stretches at her mother’s house.
That unstable lifestyle came crashing down about five years ago when she hit a 14-year-old boy with her car following a bout with meth the night before that left her tired and spaced out. The boy went into a coma, and although he pulled out of it, the ordeal was devastating, Loyola Cabral said.
To her shock but ultimate salvation, the boy’s mother pushed to help Loyola Cabral land in rehab and probation instead of jail. Through Rubicon Programs, an organization that helps people with a criminal record secure jobs after prison, Loyola Cabral’s made an important connection.
She was referred to a temporary job in the dining room at Loaves and Fishes and eventually was hired for a management position there. She knew from her initial interview this was the job she wanted.
“When you’re battling drug addiction, people don’t trust you,” Loyola Cabral said. “There is a stigma for being a bad person. When they handed me the keys to this building,” she paused, beamed, then added, “I still can’t believe it.”
The nonprofit has received funding this year from Share the Spirit, an annual holiday campaign that serves needy residents in the East Bay. Donations support programs of more than 50 nonprofit agencies in Contra Costa and Alameda counties.
At Loaves and Fishes, it’s not unusual for clients to transition into employees or volunteers, Loyola Cabral said. Although the organization’s main mission is to feed hundreds of clients a week at its five dining rooms in Pittsburg, Martinez, Antioch, Oakley and Bay Point, training some of those people for jobs in food service is also part of the program.
In 2016, for instance, it launched a culinary arts program to teach kitchen skills, starting with high school-aged students at local continuation high schools and expanding to incorporate adults.
Yvette Rene McHenry went through that culinary program four months ago.
The class taught her how to use knives in preparing high-volume food for catering or restaurants. That’s how she found a job at a catering company that prepares food for local businesses. It paid better than the maintenance job she held at a property management company for several years, and more importantly, set her on the path to a fulfilling career.
She now is building a list of hew own clients.
“It’s like they opened the door to one of my biggest dreams,” McHenry said of Loaves and Fishes. “Not only are they feeding the community, but they are helping to educate the community.”
“No one should go hungry,” Loyola Cabral said. “I always say, if I showed up to work one day and the whole place was empty, that would be the happiest day, because it would mean everyone had a safe place to go and food to eat.”
But food isn’t the only draw to the dining room. Loyola Cabral pointed to a woman who doesn’t usually eat meals there but instead picks up groceries and just sits down to enjoy the sense of community.
Thinking back to her first Christmas party as an employee at Loaves and Fishes, she described sitting around the table then and thinking, “this is the best thing ever.”
SHARE THE SPIRIT
The Share the Spirit holiday campaign, sponsored by the Bay Area News Group, serves needy residents of Alameda and Contra Costa counties by funding nonprofit holiday and outreach programs.
To make a tax-deductible contribution, clip the coupon accompanying this story or go to www.sharethespiriteastbay.org/donate. Readers with questions, and individuals or businesses interested in making large contributions, may contact the Share the Spirit program at 925-472-5760 or sharethespirit@crisis-center.org.
